Adventures in Japan

Summer Sonic

I was going to try and be cute and work the word suck into the title, like Summer Suck-ick or Summer Suck it. But those seem a little lewd and Summer Sonic didn't really suck. At least not the day I went to.

But it weren't a patch on the one from two years ago. For starters, I missed about half of the show due to work. Thems the breaks.

Also, I didn't really take a lot of pictures. And none of those that I did take were any good, so you won't be seeing any pictures of bands. You will be seeing pictures like this.



Those are people passed out at Summer Sonic. That was a fairly common sight.

The first band I saw was Bloc Party. I saw them at the last Summer Sonic, but only for one song. I saw their whole set this time. They were pretty good, but you could tell the hot Osaka sun was really hitting them hard. And the polite Japanese audience was freaking them out. Before the last song the lead singer addressed the audience with words to this effect, "This is our last song, this is your last chance to go crazy!" and the audience responded by clapping politely. Oh Japan!

After that we wandered over to see some Motorhead. That Lemmy sure is ugly.

After that we grabbed some food from the Oasis area. Also in the Oasis area: scads of bikini clad girls.

After that we took in some Cindy Lauper. That lady can sing! We got there as she was singing "Time After Time". Then she sang some song none of us knew and then Finished with "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". The place went nuts. And the place was packed. Who knew she was so popular over here? Ben was pretty upset when he heard that she had sang the Goonies theme song and he missed it.

We stayed put and saw The Cornelius Group. They had a whole audio-visual experience thing going on. It was very cool, but also very chill. My mind was engaged yet drowsy. It only perked up when I recognized a couple of the songs. Also, there were a couple of theremin solos.


After that we saw one song by The Pillows and then finished off the evening with a set from DJ Shadow and the Cut Chemist. I know that DJs aren't the most visually engaging of musical performers, but these guys knew it too. They did everything they could to liven up the experience. Before they took the stage a little instructional video aired, explaining what kind of records and equipment they used and why. It was both informative and amusing. Next, they were rolled on stage. Two guys at a long table with eight turntables. There were tons of cameras on the table as well, showing close-ups of what they were doing.

Plus videos played on the screen behind them. Their set was pretty low key to start out with, they mixed with a 45s from the 50's and 60's. But once the grooves entered the 70's, the vibe really started to pick up.

At one point they taped of a set mix on their records and then sat down and had a bite to eat. That was cute.

Their mixes were all over the place, you'd hear snippets of Queen, Elvis, Foo Fighters. Actually, that was one of my favourite parts of the set, when they let most of "Everlong" play while they messed around with the music underneath and around it.

They finished off by strapping turntables onto their chests and scratching along to "One" by Mettalica. That was a great note to end on.

I didn't get to see The Fratellis or Arctic Monkeys or the Offspring or Suicidal Tendencies but I had a pretty good time all told.